This Museum Exhibit Shows How Dance Has Become a Form of Political Protest

When the going gets tough, the tough start dancing: That's the premise behind "Dance of Urgency," a recently opened exhibit at MuseumsQuartier Vienna that features photos, video and other documentary material relating to the use of dance as political protest or social uprising.

The groups featured in the show, largely based around clubs and electronic dance music scenes, span the globe and respond to a variety of issues—from inequality and social stratification to racial divides to crackdowns on club culture itself.

The curator behind the exhibit, which runs through September 1, is Bogomir Doringer, a Serbian-Dutch multimedia artist whose own work, "I Dance Alone," filmed crowds of dancers inside nightclubs. Doringer spoke with us about the emergence of dance as popular protest.

Your studies were focused on film and multimedia work. How did you get interested in dance?

I'm from a generation that grew up during the war in Yugoslavia. I was always into topics that were socially or politically engaged. And I was always attracted to crowds and bodies and people.

In Belgrade, during the NATO bombing in '99, we didn't have schools, but we had free culture. I was 16 and hanging out on the dance floor of a techno club, Industrija.

Dancing has this mirroring effect: You collect the moves and reflect the moves around you. You were against Milosevic, but also against the bombings, which were frightening you. I became obsessed with the idea of looking at the dance floor as mirroring, as a social environment.

So when did you start filming dance clubs?

I started in 2014, looking at how the crowds were moving. I wanted to understand the crowd's character—when the synchronicity of bodies happens, whether people are moving together or not—and understand the diversity of the crowds.

Often it starts from an individual action and goes into a synchronized move. There are no instructions, just an environment where you give yourself away. It becomes extremely primitive, ritualistic.

These are nonprofessional dancers—that is very important.

How exactly does dance and club culture take on socio-political movements?

Even before Trump, before #MeToo, topics like female empowerment, sexual harassment, inclusivity/exclusivity were already being discussed at different conferences on club culture.

I see 9/11 as a trigger for change in society; it really did change the public space. In the context of dance, it changed the way that we are choreographed, both as individuals and in groups.

Can you give some examples?

One is Mamba Negra in Sao Paulo. Before it emerged, clubs were quite elitist. There was checking at the door; if you were a black person, you couldn't enter the club. At one techno club you had to use your fingerprint to enter.

So in reaction to the social layers, the divisions, younger groups of people started gathering in abandoned places, dead zones. The party was called Mamba Negra—it started as small groups of people, but now it's thousands. It wasn't necessarily coming from politics. But it created a counterculture.

Another one: Bassiani, a club in Tbilisi, became a space for experimentation, and created a political opposition to the more conservative, orthodox society. When the club was attacked by police last year, people gathered on the streets to protest. It became two days of dancing in the street.

Do you see connections between club dance and choreographed performances?

We see dance as art when happens on stage, or in a museum context—but many of these individuals, and groups, have quite high artistic expression on the dance floor. There are clubs that curate an environment where such experiences are possible: There is light, there is music and smoke; there is role playing; there is masquerade. These are a lot of the elements we use when we describe an art performance.

Latest Posts

In the new film Shirley, Elisabeth Moss stars as Shirley Jackson, the horror writer who rose to fame with her 1948 short story "The Lottery." The controversial hit led to the most mailThe New Yorker had ever received about a work of fiction. Jackson went on to write hundreds more short stories and numerous books, including The Haunting of Hill House, which was adapted into a Netflix series in 2018.

In the film, a young couple moves in with Jackson and her philandering husband, a professor at Bennington College. Shirley initially resents this intrusion, and the ensuing drama inspires her next novel. Like one of her stories, the movie is a psychological thriller, where the line between imagination and reality is blurred.

<p>"About six weeks to a month before we shot, Josephine sent me a storyboard and a whole lookbook. I found that really inspiring because I often struggle, in my own work, to communicate all my ideas. I thought, why don't I make lookbooks?" Driscoll said in a recent conversation.</p><p>After rehearsal, we headed to a hotel for the night. As a concert dancer, even this indie film felt lavish to me: All our meals were provided and we each got our own hotel room. The next morning we were up early to head back to set for hair and makeup. This was a long process, but watching the hair and makeup team get everyone into 1940s glam was one of my favorite parts of the experience.</p><p>The costume team sourced almost all the clothing from vintage stores, so most of what we were wearing was completely authentic to the time period. We were included in the crowd scenes, which showed students coming and going from class, as well as a few others, so we changed between different costumes throughout the day, sneaking in extra rehearsal time here and there.</p>

<p>To help direct movement in certain parts of the film, including crowd scenes and an eerie dream sequence, director Josephine Decker brought on choreographer <a href="https://www.dancemagazine.com/search/?q=Faye+Driscoll" target="_self">Faye Driscoll</a>, who has choreographed extensively for theater and film in addition to her own performance work. Driscoll also worked with Decker on the acclaimed indie film <em>Madeline's Madeline</em>.</p><p>At the last minute, the production team decided to cast dancers for a few scenes. I was one of them, and the whirlwind experience was my first commercial gig. I answered a casting call on a Tuesday, and by Friday I was in a van being driven to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where <em>Shirley</em> was filming on location. There were three other dancers—Tara Sheena, Lyric Danae, and Allegra Herman. We had just one afternoon to rehearse our main scene, which was shot the next day.</p><p>Our dance scene was the dream sequence, where we appeared alongside actress Victoria Pedretti, whose character is something of a temptress. As we dove into our rapid rehearsal process, Driscoll started by showing us a collection of images she and Decker had compiled to inspire the scene, ranging from sexy to grotesque.</p>

<p>By the time we got to our dance scene, the sun had gone down. We were working in and around a large tree, and the crew had set up a single massive light to illuminate the area. It was late in the day and everyone had been working since early that morning. We were told, basically, to just go for it. We performed several different movement sequences that Driscoll had put together, with the camera rolling the whole time.<br></p><p>"Those days there were like tech, dress, and a show, but with no catharsis," says Driscoll. "I love working in film, but so much of it really is delayed gratification."</p>

<p>With no real-time feedback, it's hard to tell whether what you're doing is working or not—but the crew and other actors on set were enthusiastic. "I remember people being so blown away, which was so interesting, because that wasn't something I would put on stage. But it was nice to see, because as dancers we labor and labor away for the people who love this thing that we do. And that's part of what is so valuable, that we have this community. But to get to do something like this that was a little bit weird, and a little bit outside the mainstream, it gives us a boost," says Driscoll.</p><p>Of course, we left the set knowing that everything we did could end up being cut from the film. This is partly true: Driscoll says that only a small snippet made it in. But even that little bit, as well as her work directing the movement of bodies in other scenes, shows how a dancer's perspective can enrich film.</p><p>"So many people are really not in their bodies, and that's surprising to dancers," says Driscoll. "A little bit of the information we have can go a long way."</p><p>You don't have to wait for theaters to reopen to see the movie—<em>Shirley </em>is available on Hulu and on-demand platforms like iTunes and Amazon Prime starting today.</p>